More parking may soon be coming to downtown Binghamton — though the spaces would be downtown employees.

Security Mutual has applied to construct a 62-car parking lot on the corner of Hawley and Carroll St., about two blocks from their 100 Court St. building.

The 9,050-square foot parking lot would be created by demolishing 113 Hawley St. and 63 Carroll St., the first a more than 120-year-old house and the second a one-story office building where environmental consulting firm Jennings Environmental Management now resides. Both properties are owned by Naim Arroyo Realty LLC, which is owned by Wayne Jennings, the president of Jennings Environmental Management.

On Tuesday, the company announced it was partnering with Renaissance Life & Health Insurance Company, which plans to move to 2 Court St. Around 30 Security Mutual employees will move to Renaissance Life, which will hire an additional 30 employees.

A Zoning Board of Appeals public hearing is scheduling for Feb. 5 and a planning commission public hearing for Feb. 12. The Planning Commission will make a final determination about whether the site can go forward immediately after its public hearing, said Tito Martinez, assistant director of planning for the city.

The plan would require four variances — fewer trees in the parking lot than usually required, fewer trees on the perimeter, no bicycle racks, and less of a landscape buffer.

A staff report produced for the Zoning Board of Appeals claims some of the variances aren't necessary, and says the design could have accommodated the required number of trees if it had sacrificed some parking spaces.

The ZBA approved a number of variances in March 2017, but the site plan has changed since then, requiring the board to again issue decisions on variances.

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The City of Binghamton is installing 50 parking kiosks that will replace 800 old coin-operated meters throughout the city.(Photo: Andrew Thayer / Staff Photo)

A staff report for the Binghamton Planning Commission, which usually reviews projects before the ZBA, says the proposal would conflict with the 2014 "Blueprint Binghamton Comprehensive Plan" in two ways — its proposed demolition of a more than 120-year-old house would go against the plan's historic preservation emphasis, and its creation of an additional 62 parking spots goes against a call for considering parking maximums downtown.

"The advantages of downtown living — walkability, street life, thriving businesses — are diminished by the dominance of surface parking lots that create gaps in activity," the plan states. "This makes walking unpleasant and creates a cycle; fewer people on the street make it feel inactive and unsafe, leading people to resort to driving, which fuels a demand for more parking..."

ZBA documents also point to the demolition of the historic house and creation of even more parking as conflicting with the comprehensive plan, and say having less landscaping than is usually required would go against the plan's storm water management goals.

Another board, the Commission on Architecture and Urban Design (CAUD), will decide if either of the buildings to be demolished is considered historically significant. A structure's age alone does not qualify it as historically significant.

CAUD will decide whether either of the buildings is "associated with an important historical event or person, or is an outstanding example of a historic architectural style," Martinez said. If they give the "historically significant" designation to either of the buildings, the demolition would be unlikely to go forward, he added.